The San Fransisco-based studio IwamotoScott is an interdisciplinary practice founded by the architects Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott.

As a practice committed to pursuing architecture as a form of applied design research, ISAr engages in projects at multiple scales and in a variety of contexts. These include full-scale fabrications, museum installations and exhibitions, theoretical proposals, design competitions and commissions.

Their latest installation ‘Voussoir Cloud’ is a landscape of vaults and columns consisting of clusters of three dimesional petals, which are formed by folding thin wood laminate along curved seams.

Each petal has a different geometry

“Each vault is comprised of a Delaunay tessellation that both capitalizes on and confounds the structural logics – greater cell density of smaller more connective modules, or petals, gang together at the column bases and at the vault edges to form strengthened ribs, while the upper vault shell loosens and gains porosity. At the same time, the petals – our reconstituted “voussoirs”, typically defined as the wedge shaped masonry blocks that make up an arch – are reconsidered here using paper thin material”, the architects explain.

The complexity of the installation becomes clear considering that each petal has a slightly different geometry – a computational script was developed to calculate the curvature of each piece.

Thanks to the gallery's architecture this beautiful construction could be experienced from within and above

“In the end, Voussoir Cloud attempts to defamiliarize both structure and material to create conflicted readings of normative architectural typologies. It is a light, porous surface made of compressive elements that creates atmosphere with these luminous wood pieces, and uses this to gain sensorial effects.”